Psychology and Social Sanity Part 5

The whole position of the body, the position of the hands, the direction of the attention, the rhythm of the movement, the pauses between the successive actions, the optical judgment as to the place where the spade ought to cut the ground, the distribution of energy, the respiration, and many similar parts of the total psychophysical process demand exact a.n.a.lysis if the greatest efficiency is to be reached. Everybody knows what an amount of attention the golf player has to give to every detail of his movement, and yet it would be easier to discover by haphazard methods the best way to handle the golf stick than to use the spade to the best effect.

On the other hand, the better method is not at all necessarily the more difficult one. More effort is needed at the beginning to acquire an exactly adjusted scheme of movement, but as soon as the well-organized activity has become habitual, it will realize itself with less inner interference. For the educated it is no harder to speak correct grammar than to speak slang, and it is no more difficult to write orthographically than to indulge in chaotic spelling, just as in every field it is no harder to show good manners than to behave rudely. If the sciences of digging and chopping, of reaping and raking, of weeding and mowing, of spraying and feeding, are all postulates of the future, each can transform the chance methods into exact ones, and that means into truly efficient ones, only when every element has been brought under the scrutiny of the psychological laboratory. We must measure the time in hundredths of a second, must study the psychophysical conditions of every movement, where not trees are cut or hay raked, but where the tools move systems of levers which record graphically the exact amount and character of every partial effect. The one problem of the distribution of work and rest alone is of such tremendous importance for the agricultural work that a real scientific study of the details might lead to just as much saving as the introduction of new machinery. The farmhand, who would never think of wasting his money, wastes his energies by contracting big muscles, where a better economized system of movement would allow him to reach the same result through the contraction of smaller muscles, which involves much less energy and much less fatigue. The loss by wrong bending and wrong coordination of movement may be greater than by bad weather.

Yet commonsense can never be sufficient to find the right motor will impulses. The ideal distribution of pauses is extremely different from merely stopping the work when a state of overfatigue has been reached.

Even general scientific rules could not be the last word. Subtle psychological tests would have to be devised by which the plan for alternation between work and rest could be carefully adjusted to the individual needs of every rural worker. The mere sensation of fatigue may be entirely misleading. It must be brought into definite relations to temperature, moistness, character of the work, training, and other factors. On the other hand, the absence of fatigue feeling would be in itself no indication that the limit of safety has not been pa.s.sed, and yet the work itself must suffer when objective overfatigue of the system has begun. At the right moment a short interruption may secure again the complete conditions for successful work. If that moment has pa.s.sed, an exhaustion may result which can no longer be repaired by a short rest. Any wrong method of performing these simple activities, that is, any method which is not based on exact scientific a.n.a.lysis, wastes the energies of the workingman, and by that the economic means of the farm owner, and indirectly the economic resources of the whole nation. In the Harvard Psychological Laboratory we are at present engaged in the investigation of such an apparently trivial function as sewing by hand. The finger which guides the needle is attached to a system of levers which write an exact graphic record of every st.i.tch on a revolving drum. And the deeper we enter into this study the more we discover that such a movement, of which every seamstress and every girl who makes her clothes feels that she knows everything, contains an abundance of important features of which we do not as yet know anything. With the same scientific exact.i.tude the laboratory must investigate the milking, or the making of b.u.t.ter, the feeding of the cattle and the picking of the fruit, the use of the scythe and the axe, the pruning and the husking. The mere fact that every one, even with the least skill, is able to carry out such movements with some result, does not in the least guarantee that any one carries them out to-day with the best result possible.

The governmental experiment station ought to establish regular psychological laboratories, in which the mental processes involved in the farmer's activity would be examined with the same loyalty to modern science with which the chemical questions of the soil or the biological questions of the parasites are furthered. Only such investigations could give the right cues also to the manufacturers of farming implements. At present the machines are constructed with the single purpose of greatest physical usefulness, and the farmer who uses them has to adjust himself to them. The only human factor which enters into the construction so far has been a certain desire for comfort and ease of handling. But as soon as the mental facts involved are really examined, they ought to become decisive for the details of the machine. The handle which controls the lever, and every other part, must be placed so that the will finds the smallest possible resistance, so that one psychical impulse prepares the way for the next, and then a maximum of activity can be reached with the smallest possible psychophysical energy. Such a psychological department of the agricultural station could be expanded, and study not only the mental conditions of farming, but examine also the psychological factors which belong indirectly to the sphere of agricultural work. It may examine the mental effects which the various products of the farm stir up in the customers. The feelings and emotions, the volitions and ideas which are suggested by the vegetables and fruits, the animals and the flowers, are not without importance for the success in the market. The psychology of colour and taste, of smell and touch and form, may be useful knowledge for the scientific farmer, and even his methods of packing and preparing for the market, of displaying and advertising, may be greatly improved by contact with applied psychology.

At least one of the psychological side problems demands especial attention, the mental life of the animals. Animal psychology is no longer made up of hunting stories and queer observations on ants and wasps, and gossip about pet cats and dogs and canary birds. It has become an exact science, which is housed in the psychological laboratories of the universities. And with this change the centre of interest has s.h.i.+fted, too. The mind of the animals is not studied in order to satisfy our zoological interest, but really to serve an understanding of the mental functions. It was therefore appropriate to introduce those methods which had been tested in human psychology. In our Harvard Psychological Laboratory, in which a whole floor of the building is devoted exclusively to animal experiments under specialists, single functions like memory or attention or emotion are tested in earthworms or turtles or pigeons or monkeys, and the results are no less accurate than those of subtlest human work. But this experimental animal psychology has so far served theoretical interests only. It stands where human psychology stood before the contact with pedagogy, medicine, law, commerce, and industry suggested particular formulations of the experiments. Such contact with the needs of practical life ought to be secured now for animal psychology. The farmer who has to do with cows and swine and sheep, with dogs and horses, with chickens and geese, with pigeons and bees, ought to have an immediate interest to seek this contact. But his concern ought to go still further. He has to fight the animals that threaten his harvest.

The farmer himself knows quite well how important the psychical behaviour of the animals is for his success. He knows how the milk of the cows is influenced by emotional excitement, and how the handling of horses demands an understanding of their mental dispositions and temperaments. Sometimes he even works already with primitive psychological methods. He makes use of the mental instinct which draws insects to the light when he attracts the dangerous moths with light at night in order to destroy them. Ultimately all the traps and nets with which the enemies of the crop are caught are schemes for which psychotechnical calculations are decisive. The means for breaking the horses, down to the whip and the spur and the blinders, are after all the tools of applied psychology. The manufacturer is already beginning to supply the farmer with some practical psychology: dogs which despise the ordinary dog biscuits, seem quite satisfied with the same cheap foods when they are manufactured in the form of bones. The dog first plays with them and then eats them. There is no reason why everything should be left to mere tradition and chance in a field in which the methods are sufficiently developed to give exact practical results, as soon as distinct practical questions are raised. There would be no difficulty in measuring the reaction times of the horses in thousandths of a second for optical and acoustical and tactual impressions, or in studying the influence of artificial colour effects on the various insects in the service of agriculture.

Especial importance may be attached to those investigations in animal psychology which trace the inheritance of individual characteristics.

The laboratory psychologist studies, for instance, the laws according to which qualities like savageness and tameness are distributed in the succeeding generations. He studies the proportions of those traits in hundreds of mice, which are especially fit for the experiment on account of their quick multiplication. But this may lead immediately to important results for the farmers with reference to mental traits in breeding animals. It would be misleading if it were denied that all this is a programme to-day and not a realization, a promise and not a fulfilment. The field is practically still uncultivated. But in a time in which the nation is anxious to economize the national resources, which were too long wasted, and in which the need of helping the farmer and of intensifying the values of rural life is felt so generally, it would be reckless to ignore a promise the fulfilment of which seems so near. To be sure, the farmers cultivated their fields through thousands of years without chemistry, just as they do their daily work to-day without psychology, but n.o.body doubts that the introduction of scientific chemistry into farming has brought the most valuable help to the national, and to the world economy. The time seems really ripe for experimental psychology to play the same role for the benefit of mankind, which in the future as in the past will always be prosperous only when the farmer succeeds.

VII

SOCIAL SINS IN ADVERTISING

There is one industry in the world which may be called, more than any other, a socializing factor in our modern life. The industry of advertising binds men together and tightly knits the members of society into one compact ma.s.s. Every one in the big market-place of civilization has his demands and has some supply. But in order to link supply and demand, the offering must be known. The industry which overcomes the isolation of man with his wishes and with his wares lays the real foundation of the social structure. It is not surprising that it has taken gigantic dimensions and that uncounted millions are turning the wheels of the advertising factory. The influence and civilizing power of the means of propaganda go far beyond the help in the direct exchange of goods. The advertiser makes the modern newspaper and magazine possible. These mightiest agencies of public opinion and intellectual culture are supported, and their technical perfection secured, by those who pay their business tax in the form of advertis.e.m.e.nts.

Under these circ.u.mstances it would appear natural to have just as much interest and energy and incessant thought devoted to this very great and significant industry as to any branch of manufacturing. But the opposite is true. Armies of engineers and of scientifically trained workers have put half a century of scholarly research and experimental investigation into the perfecting of the physical and chemical industries. The most thorough study is devoted to the raw material and to the machines, to the functions of the workingman and to everything which improves the mechanical output. In striking contrast to this, the gigantic industry of advertising is to-day still controlled essentially by an amateurish impressionism, by a so-called commonsense, which is nothing but the uncritical following of a well-worn path. Surely there is an abundance of clever advertis.e.m.e.nt writers at work, and great establishments make some careful tests before they throw their millions of circulars before the public. Yet even their so-called tests have in no way scientific character. They are simply based on watching the success in practical life, and the success is gained by instinct. Commonsense tells even the most superficial advertiser that a large announcement will pay more than a small one, an advertis.e.m.e.nt in a paper with a large circulation more than in a paper with a few subscribers, one with a humorous or emotional or exciting text more than one with a tiresome and stale text. He also knows that the cover page in a magazine is worth more than the inner pages, that a picture draws attention, that a repeated insertion helps better than a lonely one. Yet even a score of such rules would not remove the scheme of advertising from the commonplaces of the trade. They still would not show any trace of the fact that the methods of exact measurement and of laboratory research can be applied to such problems of human society.

Advertising is an appeal to the attention, to the memory, to the feeling, to the impulses of the reader. Every printed line of advertis.e.m.e.nt is thus a lever which is constructed to put some mental mechanism in motion. The science of the mental machinery is psychology, which works on principles with the exact methods of the experiment. It seems unprogressive, indeed, if just this one industry neglects the help which experimental science may furnish. A few slight beginnings, to be sure, have been made, but not by the men of affairs, whose practical interests are involved. They have been made by psychologists who in these days of carrying psychology into practical life have pushed the laboratory method into the field of advertising.

The beginnings indicated at once that much which is sanctioned by the traditions of economic life will have to be fundamentally revised.

Psychologists, for instance, examined the memory value of the different parts of the page. Little booklets were arranged in which words were placed in the four quarter pages. The advertiser is accustomed patiently to pay an equal amount for his quarter page, whether it is on the left half or the right, on the lower or on the upper part of the page. The experiment demonstrated that the words on the upper right-hand quarter had about twice the memory value of those on the lower left. The advertiser who is accustomed to spend for his insertion on the lower left the same sum as for that on the upper right throws half his expenditure away. He reaches only half of the customers, or takes only half a grasp of those whom he reaches. This case, which can be easily demonstrated by careful experiments, is typical of the tremendous waste which goes on in the budget of the advertising community. And yet the advertiser would not like to act like the poet who sings his song not caring whose heart he will stir.

As long as the psychologist is only aware of an inexcusable waste of means by lack of careful research into the psychological reactions of the reader, he may leave the matter to the business circles which have to suffer by their carelessness. But this economic wrong may coincide with cultural values in other fields, and the social significance of the problem may thus become accentuated. A problem of this double import, economic and cultural at the same time, to-day faces publishers, advertisers, and readers. It is of recent origin, but it has grown so rapidly and taken such important dimensions that at present it overshadows all other debatable questions in the realm of propaganda. The movement to which we refer is the innovation of mixing reading matter and advertis.e.m.e.nts on the same page. In the good old times a monthly magazine like _McClure's_ or the _American_ or the _Metropolitan_ or the _Cosmopolitan_ showed an arrangement which allowed a double interpretation. One interpretation, the idealistic one, was that the magazine consisted of articles and stories in solid unity, which formed the bulk of the issue. In front of this content, and after it, pages with advertis.e.m.e.nts were attached. The other interpretation, which suggested itself to the less ambitious reader, was that the magazine consisted of a heap of entertaining advertis.e.m.e.nt pages, between which the reading matter was sandwiched.

But in any case there was nowhere mutual interference. The articles stood alone, and the automobiles, crackers, cameras, and other wares stood alone, too. All this has been completely changed in the last two or three years. With a few remarkable exceptions like the _Atlantic Monthly_, the _World's Work_, and the _Century_, the overwhelming majority of the monthly and weekly papers have gone over to a system by which the tail of the stories and articles winds itself through the advertis.e.m.e.nt pages, and all the advertising sheets are riddled by stray pieces of reading matter. The immediate purpose is of course evident. If the last dramatic part of the story suddenly stops on page 15 and is continued on page 76, between the announcements of breakfast food and a new garter, the publisher, or rather the advertiser, hopes, and the publisher does not dare to contradict, that some of the emotional interest and excitement will flow over from the loving pair to the advertised articles. The innocent reader is skilfully to be guided into the advertiser's paradise.

We claimed that here the economic innovation, whether profitable or not, has its cultural significance. The sociologists who have thought seriously about the American type of civilization have practically agreed in the conviction that the shortcoming of the American mind lies in its lack of desire for harmony and unity. It is an aesthetic deficiency which counts not only where art and artificial beauty are in question, but shows still more in the practical surroundings and the forms of life. The nation which is and always has been controlled by strong idealistic moral impulses takes small care of the aesthetic ideals. The large expenditures for external beautification must not deceive. Just as the theatre is to the American essentially entertainment and amus.e.m.e.nt and fas.h.i.+on, but least of all a life need for great art, so on the whole background of daily life a thousand motives show themselves more effectively than the longing for inner unity and beautiful fitness. The ma.s.ses who waste their incomes for beautiful clothes, not because they are beautiful, but because they are demanded by the fas.h.i.+on, patiently tolerate the dirt in the streets, the crowding of cars, the chewing of gum, the vulgar slang in speech, and s.h.i.+rt-sleeve manners. But this undeveloped state of the sense of inner harmony has effects far beyond the mere outer appearances. The hysterical excitement in politics, the traditional indifference to corruption and crime up to the point where they become intolerable, the bewildering mixture of highest desire for education and cheapest faith in superst.i.tions and mysticism and quacks, all must result from a social mind in which the aesthetic demand for harmony and proportion is insufficiently developed. The one great need of the land is a systematic cultivation of this aesthetic spirit of unity. It cannot be forced on the millions by any sudden and radical procedures.

The steady, c.u.mulating influences of the whole atmosphere of civic life must lead to a slow but persistent change. Fortunately, many such helpful agencies are at work. Not only the systematic moulding of the child's mind by art instruction, and of the citizen's mind by beautiful public buildings, but a thousand features of the day aid in bringing charm and melody to the average man.

Seen from this point of view the new fas.h.i.+on in the makeup of the periodical literature is a barbaric and inexcusable interference with the process of aesthetic education. A page on which advertis.e.m.e.nts and reading matter are mixed is a mess which irritates and hurts a mind of fine aesthetic sensitiveness, but which in the uncultivated mind must ruin any budding desire for subtler harmony. The noises of the street, with all the whistles of the factories and the horns of the motor cars, are bad enough, and the antinoise crusade is quite in order.

Yet the destructive influence of those chaotic sounds is far weaker than the shrillness and restlessness of these modern specimens of so-called literature. The mind is tossed up and down and is torn hither and thither, following now a column of text while the advertis.e.m.e.nts are pus.h.i.+ng in from both sides, and then reading the latest advertis.e.m.e.nt while the serious text is drawing the attention.

It is the quant.i.ty which counts. The popular magazines which circulate in a million copies and reach two or three million minds are the loudest preachers of this sermon of bewilderment and scramble. A consciousness on which these tumultuous pages hammer day by day must lose the subtler sense of proportionate harmony and must develop an instinctive desire for harshness and crudeness and chaos. To overcome this riot of the printing press is thus a truly cultural task, and yet it is evident that the mere appeal to the cultural instinct will not change anything as long as the publisher and, above all, the advertiser, are convinced that they would have to sacrifice their personal profit in the interest of aesthetic education. If an end is to be hoped for, it can be expected only if it is discovered that the calculation of profit is erroneous, too. But this is after all a question of naked facts, and only the scientific examination can decide.

The problem might be approached from various sides. It was only meant as a first effort when I carried on the following experiment: I had a portfolio with twenty-four large bristol-board cards of the size of the _Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_. On eight of those cards I had pasted four different advertis.e.m.e.nts, each filling a fourth of a page. On some pages every one of the four advertis.e.m.e.nts took one of four whole columns; in other cases the page was divided into an upper and lower, right and left part. All the advertis.e.m.e.nts were cut from magazines, and in all the name of the firm and the object to be sold could be easily recognized. On the sixteen other pages the arrangement was different. There only two fourths of the page were filled by two advertis.e.m.e.nts; the other two fourths contained funny pictures with a few words below. These pictures were cut from comic papers. All the pictures were of such a kind that they slightly attracted the attention by their amusing content or by the cleverness of the drawing, but never demanded any careful inspection or any delay by the reading of the text. This, in most cases, consisted of a few t.i.tle words like "The Widow's Might," "Pause, father, is that whip sterilized?" or similar easily grasped descriptions of the story in the picture. Even where the text took two lines, it was more easy to apperceive the picture and its description than the essentials of the often rather chaotic advertis.e.m.e.nts. By this arrangement we evidently had thirty-two advertis.e.m.e.nts on the eight pages which contained nothing else, and thirty-two other advertis.e.m.e.nts on the sixteen pages which contained half propaganda and half pictures with text. All this material was used as a basis for the following test, in which forty-seven adult persons partic.i.p.ated. All were members of advanced psychological courses, partly men, partly women. None of those engaged in the experiment knew anything about the purpose beforehand. Thus they had no theories, and I carefully avoided any suggestion which might have drawn the attention in one or another direction.

Every one had to go through those twenty-four pages in twelve minutes, devoting exactly thirty seconds to every page, and a signal marked the time when he had to pa.s.s to the next. He was to give his attention to the whole content of the page, and as both the pictures and the advertis.e.m.e.nts were chosen with reference to their being easily understood and quickly grasped, an average time of more than seven seconds for each of the four offerings on the page was ample, even for the slow reader. Of course the time would not have been sufficient to read every detail in the advertis.e.m.e.nts, but no one had any interest in doing so, as they were instructed beforehand to keep in mind essentially the advertised article and the firm, and in the case of the pictures a general impression of the idea.

As soon as the twenty-four pages had been seen, every one was asked to write down the ideas of five of the funny pictures within three minutes. The results of this were of no consequence, as the purpose was only to fill the interval of the three minutes in order that all the memory pictures of the advertis.e.m.e.nts might settle down in the mind and that all might have an equal chance If we had turned immediately to the writing down of firms and articles, the last ones seen would have had an undue advantage. But when the three minutes had been filled with an effort to remember some of the funny pictures and to write down their salient points, all the mental after-images of the pages had faded away, and a true memory picture was to be produced. In the presentation care was taken to have the twenty-four pages follow in irregular order, the pages of straight advertising mixed with those of the double content. After the three minutes every one had to write down as many names of firms with the articles as his memory could reproduce. The time was now unlimited. Nothing else was to be added; the reference to the particular advertis.e.m.e.nt was entirely confined to the firm and the object. Where they knew the firm name without the object, or the article without the advertiser, they had to make a dash to indicate the omission. The aim was to discover whether the thirty-two advertis.e.m.e.nts on the mixed pages had equal chances in the mind with the thirty-two on the straight advertis.e.m.e.nt pages. In order to have an exact basis of comparison, we counted every name 1, and every article 1. Thus when firm and object were correctly given it was counted 2.

Of course there were very great individual differences. It is evident that a person who would have remembered all the sixty-four advertis.e.m.e.nts on this basis of calculation would have made 128 points. The maximum which was actually made was in the case of two women, each of whom reached 50 points. One man reached 49. The lowest limit was touched in the exceptional case of one woman who made only 11 points. The average was 28.4. These figures seem small, considering that less than a fourth were kept in mind, and even by the best memory less than a half, but it must be considered that in the modern style of advertis.e.m.e.nt the memory is burdened with many side features of the announcement, and that the result is therefore smaller than if name and article had been memorized in an isolated form. But these figures have no relation to our real problem. We wanted to compare the memory fate of the advertis.e.m.e.nts on the one kind of pages with that of the parallel advertis.e.m.e.nts on the other kind. As soon as we separate the two kinds of reproduced material we find as total result that the forty-seven persons summed up 570 points for the advertis.e.m.e.nts on pages with comic pictures, but 771 for the advertis.e.m.e.nts on pages which contained nothing else. The average individual thus remembered about six whole advertis.e.m.e.nts out of the thirty-two on the combined pages, and about eight and a fifth of the thirty-two on the straight pages. Among the forty-seven persons, there were thirty-six who remembered the straight-page notices distinctly better than the mixed-page advertis.e.m.e.nts, and only eleven of the forty-seven showed a slight advantage in favour of the mixed pages. In the case of the men this difference is distinctly greater than in the case of the women.

Only two of the fifteen men who partic.i.p.ated showed better reproducing power for the mixed material, while nine of the thirty-two women favoured it. As the advertiser is not interested in the chance variations and exceptional cases among the reading public, but naturally must rely on the averages, the results show clearly that the propaganda made on pages which do not contain anything but advertis.e.m.e.nts has more than a third greater chances, as the relation was that of 6 to 8.2.

The result is hardly surprising. We recognized that the conditions for the apprehension of the special advertis.e.m.e.nts are in themselves equally favourable for both groups. As the pictures were very easily grasped, it may even be said that there was more time left for the study of the advertis.e.m.e.nts on the mixed pages, and yet the experiment showed that they had a distinct disadvantage. The self-observation of the experimenters leaves hardly any doubt that the cause for this lies in the different att.i.tude which the mixed pages demand from the reader. The mental setting with which those pictures or the written matter is observed, is fundamentally different from that which those propaganda notices demand. If the mind is adjusted to the pleasure of reading for its information and enjoyment, it is not prepared for the fullest apprehension of an advertis.e.m.e.nt as such. The attention for the notice on the same page remains shallow as long as the entirely different kind of text reaches the side parts of the eye. On those pages, on the other hand, which contain announcements only, a uniform setting of the mind prepared the way for their fullest effectiveness.

The average reader who glances over the pages of the magazines is not clearly aware of these psychological conditions, and yet that feeling of irritation which results from the mixing of reading matter and propaganda on the same page is a clear symptom of this mental reaction. The mere fact that both the advertis.e.m.e.nts and stories or anecdotes or pictures are seen in black and white by the retina of the eye, and are in the same way producing the ideas of words and forms in the mind, does not involve the real psychological effect being the same. The identical words read as a matter of information in an instructive text, and read as an argument to the customer in a piece of propaganda, set entirely different mental mechanisms in motion. The picture of a girl seen with the understanding that it is the actress of the latest success, or seen with the understanding that it is an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a toilet preparation, starts in the whole psychophysical system different kinds of activities, which mutually inhibit each other. If we antic.i.p.ate the one form of inner reaction, we make ourselves unfit for the opposite.

An interesting light falls on the situation from experiments which have recently been carried on by a Swedish psychologist. He showed that in every learning process the intention with which we absorb the memory material is decisive for the firmness with which it sticks to our mind. If a boy learns one group of names or figures or verses with the intention to keep them in mind forever, and learns another group of the same kind of material with the same effort and by the same method, but with the intention to have them present for a certain test the next day, the mental effect is very different. Immediately after the learning, or on the morning of the next day, he has both groups equally firmly in his mind, but three days later most of what was learned to be kept is still present. On the other hand, those verses and dates which were learned with the consciousness that they had to serve the next day have essentially faded away when the time of the test has pa.s.sed, even if the test itself was not given. Every lawyer knows from his experience how easily he forgets the details of the case which has once been settled by the court, as he has absorbed the material only for the purpose of having it present up to the end of the procedure. These Swedish experiments have given a cue to further investigations, and everything seems to confirm this view. It brings out in a very significant way that the impressions which are made on our mind from without are in their effectiveness on the mind entirely dependent upon the subjective att.i.tude, and the idea that the same visual stimuli stir up the same mental reactions is entirely misleading. The att.i.tude of reading and the att.i.tude of looking at advertis.e.m.e.nts are so fundamentally different that the whole mental mechanism is in a different setting.

The result is that whenever we are in the reading att.i.tude, we cannot take the real advertising effect out of the pictures and notices which are to draw us to the consumption of special articles. The editor who forces his wisdom into the propaganda page is hurting the advertiser, who, after all, pays for nothing else but the opportunity to make a certain psychological impression on the reader. He gets a third more of this effect for which he has to pay so highly if he can have his advertis.e.m.e.nt on a clean sheet which brings the whole mind into that willing att.i.tude to receive suggestions for buying only. It is most probable that the particular form of the experiment here reported makes this difference between advertising pages with and without reading matter much smaller than it is in the actual perusal of magazines, as we forced the attention of the individual on every page for an equal time. In the leisurely method of going through the magazine the interfering effect of the editorial part would be still greater. Compared with this antagonism of mental setting, it means rather little that these scattered pieces of text induce the reader to open the advertis.e.m.e.nt. If we were really of that austere intellect which consistently sticks to that which is editorially backed, we should ignore the advertis.e.m.e.nts, even if they were crowded into the same page. They might reach our eye, but they would not touch our mind. Yet there is hardly any fear that the average American reader will indulge in such severity of taste. He is quite willing to yield to the temptation of the advertising gossip with its minimum requirement of intellectual energy for its consumption. He will therefore just as readily turn from the articles to the advertis.e.m.e.nts if they are separated into two distinct parts. Frequent observations in the Pullman cars suggested to me rather early the belief that these advertis.e.m.e.nt parts in the front and the rear of the magazine were the preferred regions between the two covers.

Just as the great public habitually prefers the light comedy and operetta to the theatre performances of high aesthetic intent, it moves instinctively to those printed pages on which a slight appeal to the imagination is made without any claim on serious thought. It is indeed a pleasant tickling of the imagination, this leisurely enjoyment of looking over all those picturesque announcements; it is like pa.s.sing along the street with its shopwindows in all their l.u.s.tre and glamour.

But this soft and inane pleasure has been crushed by the arrangement after to-day's fas.h.i.+on. Those pages on which advertising and articles are mixed helterskelter do not allow the undisturbed mood. It is as if we constantly had to alternate between lazy strolling and energetic running. Thus the chances are that the old attractiveness of the traditional advertising part has disappeared. While those broken ends of the articles may lead the reader unwillingly to the advertis.e.m.e.nt pages, he will no longer feel tempted by his own instincts to seek those regions of restlessness; and if he is of more subtle sensitiveness, the irritation may take the stronger form, and he may throw away the whole magazine, advertis.e.m.e.nt and text together. The final outcome, then, must be disadvantageous to publisher and advertiser alike. The publisher and the editor have certainly never yielded to this craving of the advertiser for a place on the reading page without a feeling of revolt. Commercialism has forced them to submit and to make their orderly issues places of disorder and chaos.

The advertisers have rushed into this scheme without a suspicion that it is a trap. The experiments have proved that they are simply injuring themselves. As soon as this is widely recognized, a countermovement ought to start. We ought again to have the treasures of our magazines divided into a straight editorial and a clean advertis.e.m.e.nt part. The advertisers will profit from it in dollars and cents through the much greater psychological effectiveness of their announcements, the editors will be the gainers by being able to present a harmonious, sympathetic, restful magazine, and the great public will be blessed by the removal of one of the most malicious nerve irritants and persistent destroyers of mental unity.

VIII

THE MIND OF THE INVESTOR

The psychologist who tries to disentangle the interplay of human motives finds hardly a problem for his art to solve when he approaches the conscientious investor. His work has brought him savings, and his savings are to work for him. Hence they must not lie idle, and in the complicated market, with its chaotic offerings, he knows what he has to do. He seeks the advice of the expert, and under this guidance, he buys that which combines great safety with a fair income. The intellectual and emotional processes which here take control of the will and of the decision are perfectly clear and simple, and the mental a.n.a.lysis offers not the least difficulty. The fundamental instincts of man on the background of modern economic conditions must lead to such rational and recommendable behaviour. A psychological problem appears only when such a course of wisdom is abandoned, and either the savings are hidden away instead of being made productive, or are thrown away in wildcat schemes. Yet of the two extremes the first again is easily understood. A hysteric fear of possible loss, an unreasonable distrust of banks and bankers, keeps the overcautious away from the market. But while such a state of mind is said to be frequent in countries in which the economic life is disorderly, enterprising Americans seldom suffer from this ailment, and even the theoretical doctrine that it is sinful to have capital working seems not to have affected practically those who have the capital at their disposal. The specific American case is the opposite one, and with regard to those reckless investors it seems less clear what psychological conditions lie at the bottom of their rashness.

Foreign visitors have indeed often noticed with surprise that the American public, in spite of its cleverness and its practical trend and its commercial instinct, is more ready to throw its money into speculative abysses than the people of other lands. What is the reason? Those observers from abroad are usually satisfied with the natural answer that the Americans are gamblers, or that they have an indomitable desire for capturing money without working. But the students of comparative sociology cannot forget the fact that many national inst.i.tutions and customs of other lands suggest that the blame might with much more justice be directed against the other party. America prohibits lotteries, while lotteries are flouris.h.i.+ng on the European continent. The Austrians, Italians, and Spaniards are slaves to lotteries, and even in sober Germany the state carries on a big lottery enterprise. President Eliot once said in a speech about the moral progress of mankind that a hundred years ago a public lottery was allowed in Boston for the purpose of getting the funds for erecting a new Harvard dormitory, and he added that such a procedure would be unthinkable in New England in our more enlightened days. Yet in the most civilized European countries, whenever a cathedral is to be built, or an exhibition to be supported, the state gladly sanctions big lottery schemes to secure the financial means. The European governments argue that a certain amount of gambling instinct is ingrained in human character, and that it is wiser to create a kind of official outlet by which it is held within narrow limits, and by which the results yielded are used for the public good.

This may be a right or a wrong policy, but in any case, it shows that the desire for gambling is no less marked on the other side of the ocean. In the same way, while private bookmakers are not allowed at most European races, the official "totalisators" offer to the gamblers the same outlets. Every tourist remembers from the European casinos in the summer resorts the famous game with the little horses, a miniature Monaco scheme. And in the privacy of the too often not very private clubs extremely neat card games are in order which depend still more upon chance than the American poker. Moreover, the Europeans have not even the right to say that American life indicates a desire for harvest without ploughing. Every observer of European life knows to what a high degree the young Frenchman or Austrian, Italian, German, or Russian approaches married life with an eye on the dowry. Hundreds of thousands consider it as their chief chance to come to ease and comfort. The whole temper of the nations is adjusted to this idea, which is essentially lacking in American society. It is evident that no method of getting rich quick is more direct, and from a higher point of view more immoral, if taken as a motive for the choice of a mate, than this plan which Europe welcomes. The same difference shows itself in smaller traits. Europe invented the tipping system, which also means that money is expected without an equivalent in labour. Tipping is essentially strange to the American character, however rapid its progress has been on the Atlantic seaboard.

Of course it would be absurd to ignore the existence and even the prevalence of similar att.i.tudes in America. If the dowry does not exist, not every man marries without a thought of the rich father-in-law. Forbidden gambling houses are abundant, private betting connected with sport is flouris.h.i.+ng everywhere; above all, the economic organization admits through a back-door what is banished from the main entrance, by allowing stocks to be issued for very small amounts. In Germany the state does not permit stocks smaller than one thousand marks, equal to two hundred and fifty dollars, with the very purpose of making speculative stock buying impossible for the man of small means. The waiter and the barber who here may buy very small blocks of ten-dollar stocks have no such chance there. Stock buying is thus confined to those circles from which a certain wider outlook may be expected. The external framework of the stock market is here far more likely to tempt the man of small savings into the game, and the mere fact that this form has been demanded by public consciousness suggests that the spirit which craves lotteries is surely not absent in the new world, even though the lottery lists in the European newspapers are blackened over before they are laid out in the American public libraries. A certain desire for gambling and quick returns evidently exists the world over. But if the Americans are really speculating more than all the other nations, a number of other mental features must contribute to the outcome.

One tendency stands quite near to gambling, and yet is characteristically different, the delight in running risks, the joy in playing with dangers. Some races, in which the gambling instinct is strong, are yet afraid of high risks, and the pleasure in seeking dangerous situations may prevail without any longing for the rewards of the gambler. It seems doubtful whether this adventurous longing for unusual risks belongs to the Anglo-Saxon mind. At least those vocations which most often involve such a mental trend are much more favoured by the Irish. It is claimed that they, for instance, are prominent among the railroad men, and that the excessive number of accidents in the railroad service results from just this reckless disposition of the Irishmen. It tempts them to escape injury and death only by a hair. Where this desire to feel the nearness of danger, yet in the hope of escaping it, meets the craving for the excitement of possible gain, a hazardous investment of one's savings must be expected.

Yet it would be very one-sided and misleading if this group of emotional features were alone made responsible for the lamentable recklessness in the market. We must first of all necessarily acknowledge the tremendous powers of suggestion which the whole American life and especially the stock market contains. The word suggestion has become rather colourless in popular language, but for the psychologist, it has a very definite meaning. Suggestion is always a proposition for action, which is forced on the mind in such a way that the impulse to opposite action becomes inhibited. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, when a proposition is made to do a certain thing through the mechanism of the mind, the idea of the opposite action may arise. If some one tells the normal man to go and do this or that, he will at once think of the consequences, and in his mind perhaps the idea awakes of the dangerousness or of the foolishness, of the immorality or of the uselessness of such a deed, and any one of these ideas would be a sufficient motive for ignoring the proposed line of behaviour and for suppressing the desire to follow the poor advice.

But often this normal appearance of the opposite ideas fails. If they arise at all, they are too faint or too powerless to offer resistance, and often they may not even enter consciousness. They remain suppressed, and the result is that the idea of action finds its way unhindered, and breaks out into the deed which normally would have been checked. If this is the case, the psychologist says that the mind was in a state of increased suggestibility.

The degree of suggestibility, that is of willingness to yield to such propositions for action and of inability to resist them, is indeed different from man to man. We all know the stubborn persons who are always inclined to resist whatever is proposed to them and who do not believe what is told them, and we know the credulous ones who believe everything that they see printed. But the degree of suggestibility changes no less from hour to hour with the individual. In a state of fatigue or under the influence of alcohol or under the influence of strong emotions, in hope and fear, the suggestibility is reenforced.

The highest degree of suggestibility is that mental state which we call hypnotism, in which the power to resist the proposed idea of action is reduced to a minimum. But the chief factor in making us suggestible is the method by which the idea of action is proposed, and in psychology we speak of suggestion whenever an action is proposed by methods which make the mind yielding. It certainly is not objectionable to exert suggestive influence. Suggestions are the leading factors in education, in art, and in religion. The authoritative voice with which the teacher proposes the right thing has a most valuable suggestive power to suppress in the child the opposite misleading impulse. But surely suggestions can become dangerous and destructive. If actions are proposed in a form which paralyzes the power to become conscious of the opposite impulses, the voice of reason and of conscience is silenced, and social and moral ruin must be the result.

Everybody at once thinks of the endless variety of advertis.e.m.e.nts. An announcement which merely gives information is of course no suggestion. But if perhaps such an announcement takes the form of an imperative, an element of suggestion creeps in. To be sure we are accustomed to this trivial pattern, and no one completely loses his power to resist if the proposition to buy comes in the grammatical form of a command. If we had reached the highest degree of suggestibility, as in hypnotism, we could not read "Cook with gas"

without at once putting a gas stove into our kitchen. Yet even such a mild suggestion has its influence and tends slightly to weaken the arguments which would lead to an opposite action. The advertis.e.m.e.nts, however, which the brokers send to our house and which are spread broadcast in the homes of the country to people who have no technical knowledge of stock-buying are surely not confined to such child-like and bland forms of suggestion. The whole grouping of figures, the distribution of black and white in the picture of the market situation, the glowing story of the probable successes with the bewildering hints of special privileges, must increase the suggestibility of the untrained mind and reenforce powerfully the suggestive energy of the proposition to buy. The whole technique of this procedure has nowhere been brought to such virtuosity as in our country. The fact which we mentioned, that the new industrial and mining enterprises can offer shares small enough to be accessible to the man without means, has evidently been the chief reason for developing a style of appeal which would be unthinkable in the countries where the investors are essentially experienced business men.

But the skill of the prospectus with its sometimes half fraudulent features would, after all, not gain such influence if suggestion were not produced from another side as well, namely, through the instinct of imitation. The habit of making risky investments is so extremely widespread that the individual buyer does not feel himself isolated, and therefore dependent upon his own judgments and deliberations. He feels himself as a member of a cla.s.s, and the cla.s.s easily becomes a crowd, even a mob, a mob in which the logic of any mob reigns, and that is the logic of doing unthinkingly what others do. It is well known that every member of a crowd stands intellectually and morally on a lower level than he would stand if left to his spontaneous impulses and his own reflections. The crowd may fall into a panic and rush blindly in any direction into which any one may have happened to start and no one thinks about it, or it may go into exaltation and exuberantly do what no one alone would dare to risk. This ma.s.s consciousness is also surely a form of increased suggestibility. The individual feels his own responsibility reduced because he relies instinctively on the judgment of his neighbours, and with this decreased responsibility the energy for resistance to dangerous propositions disappears. Men buy their stocks because others are doing it.

But finally, may we not call it suggestion, too, if the individual even tremblingly accepts the risks of perilous deals, because he feels obliged to grasp for an unusually high income in order to live up to the style of his set? Of course there is no objective standard of living if we abstract from that where the income simply secures the needs of bare existence. Above that, everything depends upon the habits of those around us. If the community steadily screws up these habits, makes life ostentatious for those of moderate means as well as for the rich, hysterically emphasizes the material values, the will to be satisfied with the income of safe investments has to fight against tremendous odds. The truly strong mind will keep its power to resist, but the slightly weak mind will find the suggestion of the surrounding life more powerful than the fear of possible loss. If all the neighbours in the village have automobiles, the man who would enjoy a quiet book and a pleasant walk much more than a showy ride will yield, and spend a thousand dollars for his motor car where fifty dollars for books would have brought him far more intense satisfaction. In no country have fas.h.i.+on and ostentatiousness taken such strong possession of the ma.s.ses, and the willingness to be satisfied with a moderate income is therefore nowhere so little at home.

Yet neither gambling and taking risks, nor suggestibility and imitation, are the whole of the story. We must not forget the superficiality of thinking, the uncritical, loose, and flabby use of the reasoning power which shows itself in so many spheres of American ma.s.s life. It is sufficient to see the triviality of argument and the cheapness of thought in those newspapers which seek and enjoy the widest circulation. It is difficult not to believe that fundamentally sins of education are to blame for it. The school may bring much to the children, but no mere information can be a subst.i.tute for a training in thorough thinking. Here lies the greatest defect of our average schools. The looseness of the spelling and figuring draws its consequences. Whoever becomes accustomed to inaccuracy in the elements remains inaccurate in his thinking his life long. If the American public loses a hundred million dollars a year by investments in worthless undertakings, surely not the smallest cause is the lack of concise reasoning. Wrong a.n.a.logies control the thought of the ma.s.ses.

Any copper stock must be worth buying because the stock of Calumet-Hecla multiplied its value a hundredfold. But the irony of the situation lies in the fact that, as experience shows, those who are the clearest thinkers in their own fields are in the realm of investments as easily trapped as the most superficial reasoners. It is well known that college professors, school teachers, and ministers figure prominently on the mailing lists of unscrupulous brokers, and their hard-earned savings are especially often given for stocks which soon are not worth the paper on which they are printed. Sometimes, to be sure, this unpractical behaviour of the idealists really results from an unreasonable indifference to commercial questions. The true scholar, whose life is tuned to the conviction that he has more important things to do in the world than to make money, readily falls into a mood of carelessness with regard to the money which he does chance to make. In this state of indifference he follows any advice and may easily be misled.

But it seems probable that the more frequent case is the opposite one.

Just because the teacher and the pastor have small chance to save anything, they give their fullest thought to the question how to multiply their earnings, and their mistake springs rather from their ignorance of the actual conditions. They think that they can figure it out by mere logic and overlook the hard realities. They resemble another group of victims who can be found in the midst of commercial life, the over-clever people who rely on especially artificial arguments. They feel sure that they see some points which no one else has discovered, and while they may have noticed some small reasonable points, they overlook important conditions which the simpler-minded would have seen. They know everything better than their neighbours, and whatever their friends buy or sell they at once have a brilliant argument to prove that the step was wrong. They generally forget that the listener must be suspicious of their wisdom, as they themselves have never earned the fruit of their apparent wisdom. They all, however, may find comfort in the well-known fact that hardly any great financier has died, not even a Harriman or a Morgan, without there being found in his possession large quant.i.ties of worthless stocks and bonds. But the variety of intellectual types, the careless and the uncritical, the over-clever and the illogical thinkers, could easily protect themselves against the dangers of the shortcomings in their mental mechanism if their minds had not another trait, which, too, is more frequent in America than anywhere else in the world-the lack of respect for the expert.